The Ultimate Guide To Living On Purpose

When I look at my boys, I am both excited and terrified, for them. I am excited because their life’s journey has just started. At this stage of their young lives, they have no limitations, no worries, and they are highly motivated to invent their world.

My youngest voraciously attacks each day; he climbs, he falls, he cries, only to do it all over again. My oldest has a fearless imagination and is predisposed to telling wild stories; of sea monsters living in the midnight zone.

And failure for them is not the end of the story, it sets in motion a series of questions, learning moments and even goals.

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo.”
– Steve Jobs

Yes, you are unremarkably average

I am terrified because, their journey must yield to the reality that they must become members of society. An ordered community that has little tolerance for the round pegs in the square holes and covets conformity above all else.

As my boys comply, they will gradually lose the voracity to forge their path and eventually graduate to what Chris Guillebeau, author of The $100 Startup, defines as — the unremarkable average.

Guillebeau illustrates that the unremarkable average live by a set of rules, commandments if you will:

Accept what people tell you at face value

Don’t question authority

Go to college because you’re supposed to, not because you want to learn something

Go overseas once or twice in your life, to somewhere safe like England

Don’t try to learn another language, everyone else will eventually learn English

Think about starting your own business, but never do it.

Think about writing a book, but never do it

Get the largest mortgage you qualify for and spend 30 years paying for it

Sit at a desk 40 hours a week for an average of 10 hours of productive work

Don’t stand out or draw attention to yourself

Jump through hoops. Check off boxes.

Does this life sound strangely familiar to you? Don’t be afraid to say, “Yes.” This set of rules is what conformity looks like, and no one will ever challenge you to be different.

Why regret will lead you to live on purpose

Richard Leider, the author of the Life Reimagined, found that most people regretted living an average life. They wished they had gotten more from their lives; to live on purpose.

Leider interviewed hundreds of people over the age of 65 and asked them one question, “If you could live your life over again what would you do differently?” And three themes kept repeating:

I would be more reflective; I would stop to enjoy the moments of my life.

I would be more courageous; I would not be fearful of not conforming.

I would understand my purpose; because my life needs to matter.

If this small sample of people regretted living an average life, for the sake of argument, I would say that everyone has the same regret. So the real question is why are you living your life the way other people expect you too?

Tony Robbins explains that, “The difference with anyone that has followed through is that we are more afraid of what life would be like if we don’t follow through – than the person that is willing to settle with what they have and hoping that it will change.”

So fear if allowed can retard your choices. Now knowing this, how do you leverage fear and start taking small steps to living on purpose?

Committing to new skills will lead you to success

You commit to the skills that will give you the most freedom. And how do you know what skills you need? You need to ask yourself these two questions:

What do I really want out of my life?

What will I give back to my community for supporting me?

Now you turn your dream into a project and like any project you begin by creating three lists:

A list of everything a project needs to be considered a good project

A list of all the skills you don’t have that are important to the project’s success

A list of everything you are afraid of and out of your control

At the beginning of most new projects, you will lack mastery of key skills that are critical for the success of the project. Understanding this issue is critical and will condition you to focus on those necessary skills.

You could focus on mastering all the skills at once. But experience has taught me that dividing your limited energy is counterproductive. Instead, first, focus on that one skill that will create the most freedom for you.

Once you have identified the skill to master, you must not only create a set of habits, but you must also have a provocative ”why” is the skill important. This strategy will place you in the proper mindset to keep you growing the new skill until it’s mastered.

Once you have mastered the necessary skills and you have achieved your goal — it becomes a game for you. Why – because progress is happiness. Therefore, you start asking yourself — “what is next” or “what else can I do to create more freedom and happiness in my life?”

You then revisit these two questions:

What do I really want out of my life?

What will I give back to my community for supporting me?

…and the game starts all over again.

The Iron Cowboy Story

A story that recently caught my attention is about James “Iron Cowboy” Lawrence. In 2014 Lawrence set a new world record by achieving a personal goal of the 50, 50, 50 — that’s 50 iron distance triathlon races in 50 consecutive days in 50 states.

If you are unfamiliar with what an iron distance triathlon is, here is the breakdown:

A 2.4-mile swim

An 112-mile bike ride

A 26.2 marathon run

The interesting thing is that Lawrence is a regular guy, married with five kids. So what separates him from you — his why.

James ran a 4-mile fun race one Thanksgiving and during that race everything hurt — lungs, heart, legs, etc. At the end of that race Lawrence decided his life had to change. Why, because James was not going to allow that moment to define his life.

“It’s not a matter of how to get to the other side of that mountain. It’s which way am I going to do it — am I going to go over it, am I going to go around it, am I going to go through it? But ultimately at the end of the day I am going to make it to the other side of that mountain. Come hell or high water.”
– James Lawrence

James never thought that completing the 50, 50, 50 was not going to be worth it. He was on a mission, not only to prove to himself that it could be done. But teach his children that when you set a goal there needs to be 100% conviction that you will achieve that goal. And if you lack that conviction then there is no point in setting the goal, in the first place.

Lawrence’s mission had a welcomed side effect, James began to inspire others to do something outside of themselves. The hardest moments for James was not listening to the people that told him “you can’t do it.” It was shocking to him that it was the overwhelming majority of the people that told him – “You will fail. This is impossible.”

One of those positive moments for Lawrence was his 27th race. James helped a little boy named Dayton compete in his first triathlon. This race was particularly important to Lawrence because Dayton has cerebral palsy.

Conclusion

We spend a lot of our lives being average and focusing on the wrong thing. What if you took that same energy and focused on becoming a better version of you? What if you focused on helping others achieve their dreams?

Your goals may never get national attention like James “Iron Cowboy” Lawrence, but what if they help put a smile on the face of a boy like Dayton. Wouldn’t that be more amazing than living an unremarkably average life?

Thank you for reading my article! Please tell me how my article has helped you in the comment section below!

Ramon B. Nuez Jr. studies leadership. Ramon interviews leaders across a broad range of disciplines such as CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders — to uncover what makes them exceptional leaders. Ramon writes about leadership in world famous blogs like the Huffington Post, Addicted2Success, Lifehack, and Business2Community. He has also been an editor for the World Wide Web Foundation and Crowdsourcing Week. Ramon is working on self-publishing his first book; tentatively titled “The Growth Journal | a notebook for living with impact.” Ramon is endlessly conducting research on entrepreneurship, skill acquisition, productivity, behavioral psychology and leverages the investigation to help high achievers become so valuable that they can’t be ignored. Visit him online at www.ramonbnuezjr.com.

Awesome article!!! Very sobering as well in that I follow those set of 11 rules and makes me feel ashamed. Being 47 and not feeling like I have found my purpose because of fear stings but doesn’t have to define me.

Phenomenal read. I had never heard of James Lawrence before reading this article. A perfect example of someone who dictates his happiness through dedication to his goals. He took something that seemed impossible to the average eye and smashed through it.

Axel. thanks for the kind words. Until I wrote this article I had never heard of the Iron Cowboy. Either through fate or luck I ran across a YouTube JayBird advertisement. It was a 2-minute B-Roll and I was captivated. So much so that it inspired me to write this article and start running. I am running 2 5k’s and a 15k this year. And I plan to run the NYC Marathon in 2016.

I hope this article has inspired you to go out there and accomplish something that you see as impossible. Good luck.

Comfort Vs Courage: It’s Easier To Stay In Bed Than Face Your Goals.

On paper, your goals seem like a must. You want that successful business, you want to inspire others, you want to get on stage and wow the audience or you might even want to write a New York Times Best Selling Book.

Most of us do none of this. We set our goals like the ones mentioned and then consistently fall short.

Then there are the outliers who do achieve these audacious goals.

An example of an outlier I learned last week was a lady named Michaela Alexis. Like me, she’s crippled with a fear of public speaking. What inspired me was that recently she spoke in front of thousands of people.

The last time she tried this, she failed badly and forgot what she was going to say. The speech she gave was mostly a wash of F ups and an overwhelming sense of fear.

As Michaela faced the stage again, with Gary Vaynerchuk speaking after her, she was crippled by her fear. Despite her fear she went out on the stage and gave her talk to thousands of people.

She even filmed how nervous she was before the event. You can tell that as easy as she made it look, the behind the scenes showed the truth: she was scared out of her mind and full of fear.

On the day of her talk, she nearly stayed in bed and didn’t achieve her primary goal of becoming great at public speaking.

The choice is ours.

“We can either stay in bed where it’s comfortable, warm and there are no critics to judge us, or we can face the world and push beyond our limits”

Each of us has this same choice and most of us make the wrong one or we tell ourselves “I’ll start tomorrow.”

Tomorrow never comes. We keep dreaming about our goals but we rarely try to execute on them. Now I’m not saying we always hide from these big scary goals, but what I’ve experienced is we don’t execute on our goals enough.

Doing something like public speaking once a year or twice a year won’t crank up the dial enough on your results.

Michaela has shown that the fastest way to achieve our big goals is to be relentless. She’s done that by going on stage several times in a short-period.

Most of all, it takes courage.

“You stay in your warm bed and never execute because you lack courage”

We’re not born with courage though. We develop it.

Courage is a musclethat must be exercised every week. Doing the reps any less than a weekly commitment will see your vision, and ultimately your goals, become too far into the distance. To stay on the right track, you’ve got to gain leverage on yourself.

What I’ve learned is that courage is really nothing more than doing the small tasks that form part of your goals. In other words, courage is taking action without being attached to the result.

The moment you focus too hard on the result you’re trying to achieve, you get lost in your own thoughts. Gaining leverage on yourself and having courage starts with scheduling tasks in your calendar. Once something is locked in your calendar, you gain leverage on yourself.

None of us want to let others down and by putting things in your calendar, you make time for being courageous. The good news is you can always retreat to your bed if on the day of taking action you can’t proceed.

What I’ve found though is that you won’t. Once it’s locked in, there’s a very good chance you’re going to execute. Having things in your diary helps to activate your auto-pilot mode. The moment you can use autopilot mode when you require courage is when your circumstances start to change.

Rising up to the challenge.

After moments of courage, the progress you see towards your goals will make it all worth it. Seeing Michaela Alexis witness this firsthand, and sharing it on LinkedIn after her speech last week, made that very idea sink in.

The difference between staying in bed – your metaphorical comfort zone – and crushing your goals is rising up to the challenge in front of you. It’s looking the audience in the eye and telling them you got this. You were born to do this!

All of us get to face these challenges and many of us opt out. Rising up is about finding the hidden courage within yourself to take action when logically it doesn’t make sense.

It’s about using the nerves you’re feeling towards your advantage. It’s about taking your adversities and turning them into weapons of mass destruction.

Final Thought.

Seeing Michaela Alexis look physically sick, nervous, fearful and like she was about to die taught me so much. It’s not often that we get to lift the cover on someone like her who has so much influence, to see what actual courage looks like. The behind the scenes look at all the people you admire will show several similarities to Michaela.

Everything looks easy on video and what you don’t see is the courage that success takes. Each of us is burdened with our own flavor of challenges and overcoming them using courage is how we rise up, get what we want, and cross off those goals that give meaning to our lives.

Purpose, vision, entrepreneurship, personal development and anything else you can think of means nothing unless you have the courage to execute.

You can hide in the comfort of your bed or get out there and dance in front of dragons while the tree’s around you burn bright, and your mind is silenced from all the overthinking.

The choice is yours.

Will you choose courage or comfort?

If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net

This Is What You Should Do When Your Motivation Is Gone

We both know how life feels when you’re motivated, you feel unstoppable, like you can do anything and make anything happen. What makes you feel motivated when you start something isn’t always the same thing that will motivate you in the future. The problem is when people, who don’t read blogs like this, end up just accepting a lack of motivation as their reality and using it as their EXCUSE to avoid taking action and going after their destiny.

If following your destiny and fulfilling your purpose was easy, everyone would do it, however it takes a different type of person to pursue their destiny, a person that reads blogs like this…

This blog is for 2 types of people:

1. You are feeling motivated but want to make sure you keep the consistency of your results.

2. You are feeling a lack of motivation and you know that maintaining your drive will take your life to the next level.

The tools I’m going to share with you are what I have used to create an amazing relationship with my wife, build a 7 figure business, and transform my health, from being 60 lbs overweight to having abs for 8 years straight. Implementing these actions and habits into your life with cultivate success in your life without making you feel like you’re using all your will power, all the time. I believe commitment and motivation go hand in hand. Many people are motivated but they aren’t committed to their dreams, this is why they lack results. Take a Navy Seal for example, he can show up to day 1 of training super motivated, but what happens when he’s weeks deep into the most rigorous exercises?

Is it only the motivated ones that continue on or is it the ones who are committed?

You got it, the committed. But then what happens shortly after they graduate and get their trident?

The feeling of motivation comes back with a greater measure because they did it, they experienced that first taste of success as a result of their commitment. Motivation is a great tool. If we had to live being committed to our cause and purpose without motivation we wouldn’t have as much passion. Using these two tools together is how the most successful people experience the compounding effect of motivation. They make a decision when they are motivated and chose to stay committed to what their decision. Commitment is doing what you said you were going to do, long after the feeling has passed.

“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” – Henry Ford

Commitment is an unbreakable promise and choice you make, it is 100% up to you, whether you feel like it tomorrow or not. Commitment is giving the decisions you make today a long standing integrity, it’s relying on that commitment to withstand even when you want to take a break or feel overwhelmed, it’s pushing through.

Sometimes it’s going back into your past and seeing what worked before. You can use previous motivation as an anchor, pulling yourself back into that frame of mind at any time. Being able to control your emotions and mindset is a huge key to being successful.

It’s important to know what triggers your motivation and what it takes get you back into that state of mind. An example is similar to me when I go golfing, if I’m at the driving range practicing sometimes I will get lazy and my hits will get worse and worse. But when I go out on the course, when I know it counts, I feel myself get into the zone where I have a routine that I aim to execute.

I can access that “zone” on the range as well and anchor that feeling for whenever I need it. Remember when you felt motivated or full of energy, what can you do to bring back that feeling? How can you anchor yourself so that when you think of it, all your motivation comes back and pulls you into the zone?

You adapt to your environment

The #1 thing lacking for most people is in their environment. You will always adapt to your environment and you will always be a product of your five closest friends. Think about someone who gets into the gym every day. They workout because their actions and environment gives them the opportunity to be in changes of themselves. Now apply it to yourself, if you are in an environment without any pressure or opportunities, it’s very likely that will affect your motivation.

Look at the five people closest to you. What is their motivation level? What is their success level in health, business and relationships? It’s like a black hole sucking you in, it could be extremely positive or detrimental to your success. You are either dragging dead weight, an equivalent of the toxicity surrounding you or you’re being dragged and catapulted into success, prompted to pursue your destiny by the people who surround you.

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

Look at network marketing companies, they know that if they create local, regional, and national events they can place people in an environment to change and learn, and there are often enough events that the people showing up to all of them will stay consistent and make themselves and the company profitable.

What are some things you do when you’ve lost motivation? Comment below!

Embrace The Passion Of The Moment: Here’s How.

I’m sitting here on a Saturday afternoon thinking about my next career move. There are two companies I’m in love with and I’ve just had a spark of inspiration.

I’m dealing with a recruiter who knows both of them. Instead of waiting until Monday morning to send him a note about my passion for these two companies, I decided f*ck it; I’m going to embrace the passion I have right now.

Rather than write these words and not follow them myself, I decided to write a letter to the recruiter.

I told him “Person X should definitely have coffee with me.”

I laid out the ten reasons why I can transform their business and linked it back to my passion (blogging).

I ended the email with “Can you feel my passion and energy?”

How bad do you want it?

In these moments of passion, you have to ask yourself “How bad do you want it?”

Are you going to sit on your ass and do nothing or are you going to create opportunity?

My career is down the toilet and only I can fix this challenge. Blaming, crying and complaining will not fix the issue. The passion of the current moment that I get from time to time will.

The same is true for you. If you want something, you have to not only execute but deliver passion too. Think clearly about who can help you and then make the connection.

Don’t be selfish either.

Passion is great but if you use it to fulfill your own selfish desires, then you’ll also fail. In my email, to the recruiter, I told him to tell the two prospective companies that I will give them my advice and strategy for free even if they don’t decide to hire me.

I put it all on the line and backed up my claims and promises with evidence.

“Coming from a place of humbleness and being open to giving stuff away for free is how you show people you care”

Combine this hack with passion, and you have a powerful cocktail of whoop ass that can help you reach your goals – mine is changing my career.

People are attracted to your passion and it’s what sells.

Every entrepreneur I have met who has nailed a pitch has used passion. They’ve made the audience feel instead of trying to inform them.

We make decisions based on emotion, not logic (you know this already) and so when you use passion, you speak to the one thing they’re looking for but are never going to tell you: emotion.

When I feel someone’s passion, I get goosebumps down my spine and I almost always say yes when this happens.

Let’s add fear.

When you lay it all on the line, you’ll often get a sharp dose of fear. This fear can be combined with passion to achieve almost any result. For example, when I do public speaking, I’m almost always a bit nervous. Fear helps give me energy and then I use passion to deliver my message.

By using mostly passion to speak in front of an audience, I don’t need to think too much about notes because my passions (like social media) are engrained in my memory.

Fear is like a strong dose of coffee for me and it makes me alert to the audiences needs and the way they feel.

The single biggest hack.

If you’re having a moment of passion like I just did, then you must use it.

“Moments of passion are typically followed by deep states of “flow” and so you can deliver big results during this time without too much effort”

Moments of passion should never be ignored. Stop everything when you get one and use audio, video or words to capture the message. I’ve recently suffered a few issues with memory thanks to my evil friend mercury which has been discovered in my blood at very high levels.

Because my memory sucks, I’ve been forced to write things down and take action right away otherwise I forget whatever it is that I was going to do.

This may seem like a weakness – not for long as I’m cleaning out the mercury right now – but it’s actually one of my superpowers.

A trigger for a moment of passion is when you get pissed off. For example, if you go to the supermarket today and you’re pissed off by all the products that are loaded with sugar, use your passion to do something about it or capture your thoughts.

Many people find me inspiring and I believe that’s because I capture passion, bottle it up, and deliver it to your phone or computer via blog posts. All I am really doing is capturing moments of passion. I’m looking for things in my internal and external world that will help you.

The number one thing I’m trying to do is use my passion to help you take action. I want you to execute above everything else on your big goals.

Final thought.

I have no idea whether this email to the recruiter will work. Maybe he will read it and think “Geez this Tim guy is so lame. Who’d write such a ridiculous email and actually hit send?”

The thing is I don’t care and you shouldn’t either. Some people are going to get your passion and others are going to think you’re nuts. The ones that think you’re nuts were never going to help you anyway so all you have done is self-select the people that CAN help.

I’m over caring what people think and I’m never going to hide my passion. I hid my passion for years and that got me nowhere. Start swinging the axe at the tree and don’t worry if you miss.

Fingers crossed that this email translates otherwise at least I’ve got a cool story to tell, right?

Hell yeah, amigo!

Embrace your passion right now!

If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net

I live in a country where there is endless opportunity, no war, hardly any violence, beautiful beaches and really healthy food.

Sometimes we need to take a long hard look at ourselves and realize what we have instead of being lost in thoughts of what we don’t have.

Let’s use my own situation to analyze what I have. I have:

– Some really good storytelling skills
– Great insight into social media
– Excellent sales skills
– A history of successful entrepreneurship
– An income generating side business
– Some evolving public speaking skills
– Phenomenal health

Now think about your own situation. When you think long and hard, what do you have?

We are actually very lucky.

Yes, you’ve heard it before but I’m going to say it again. The odds of you being born are massively not in your favor. Here’s the fact from my friend Google:

“The probability of you existing at all comes out to 1 in 10 2,685,000”

Just by being born you are already lucky. There’s no need to feel sorry for yourself because you’ve already won.

When you go through a rough time like I am with my career right now, the way you maintain your mindset is realizing how lucky you are.

All of us are already lucky and by remembering that in the tough times, it gives us the energy to stop ourselves from giving it all up and throwing in the towel.

During moments of chaos, you must remember how lucky you already are.

Someone may not see your talent but that doesn’t mean you’re not lucky.

That’s what I am telling myself today. People in my career right now are not seeing my real talent but that doesn’t mean I don’t have any or that I’m not lucky to be alive.

Sometimes the reality is the opposite of what you think. Sometimes the fact someone can’t see your talent has more to do with their weaknesses. Maybe that person who doesn’t believe in you is just very average and hasn’t developed any greatness of their own (yet).

Rejection often has nothing to do with you at all.

That’s why right now I’m not personally having a bar of it. I encourage you to say the following lines to yourself:

“I can be extraordinary regardless of outside opinions.”
“I will not let rejection blind me from my true talents.”
“Everything happens for a reason and this moment will appear lucky later on.”

The concept of luck.

My idea of luck is pretty extreme. I believe that the more good you do and the more you help others, the luckier you get. Becoming lucky has nothing to do with luck at all.

You can generate perceived luck by following this formula.

You can’t even start though unless you begin to see you’re lucky first.

“That’s because scarcity blinds you from the abundance that each of us has access to”

Put things into perspective.

Things could be tough right now but they could be even worse. That very idea should cheer you up right now.

There are highs and lows in our career and unless you can embrace both sides of this reality, you’ll get lost in a negative reality that forces you to think you’re not already lucky.

I’m guilty of that too – especially today.

What we must remember is so cliché: we have air in our lungs and are alive. This means we are already luckier than most things that exist in the universe.

Focus on how you can get to where you want to go rather than being lost in what you’re lacking. By doing this, you’ll realize how lucky you have it.

The job loss, divorce, sickness, startup failure – whatever – will serve you so much more when you realize how lucky you are with or without those challenges.

If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net

Trying to Build Charisma? Pay Attention to How You Speak

Have you ever listened to yourself talking and said how on earth do I sound that terrible? Most of us don`t realize they have voice issues until we accidentally listen to our voice or seek professional help. But the truth is, 38 percent of your charisma comes from the way you talk.(more…)

Marwan Jamal is a fitness and health blogger at healthline.com. He’s a great fan of the gym and a healthy diet. He follows the trends in fitness, gym, and healthy life and loves to share his knowledge through useful and informative articles.

Awesome article!!! Very sobering as well in that I follow those set of 11 rules and makes me feel ashamed. Being 47 and not feeling like I have found my purpose because of fear stings but doesn’t have to define me.

Phenomenal read. I had never heard of James Lawrence before reading this article. A perfect example of someone who dictates his happiness through dedication to his goals. He took something that seemed impossible to the average eye and smashed through it.

Axel. thanks for the kind words. Until I wrote this article I had never heard of the Iron Cowboy. Either through fate or luck I ran across a YouTube JayBird advertisement. It was a 2-minute B-Roll and I was captivated. So much so that it inspired me to write this article and start running. I am running 2 5k’s and a 15k this year. And I plan to run the NYC Marathon in 2016.

I hope this article has inspired you to go out there and accomplish something that you see as impossible. Good luck.

Comfort Vs Courage: It’s Easier To Stay In Bed Than Face Your Goals.

On paper, your goals seem like a must. You want that successful business, you want to inspire others, you want to get on stage and wow the audience or you might even want to write a New York Times Best Selling Book.

Most of us do none of this. We set our goals like the ones mentioned and then consistently fall short.

Then there are the outliers who do achieve these audacious goals.

An example of an outlier I learned last week was a lady named Michaela Alexis. Like me, she’s crippled with a fear of public speaking. What inspired me was that recently she spoke in front of thousands of people.

The last time she tried this, she failed badly and forgot what she was going to say. The speech she gave was mostly a wash of F ups and an overwhelming sense of fear.

As Michaela faced the stage again, with Gary Vaynerchuk speaking after her, she was crippled by her fear. Despite her fear she went out on the stage and gave her talk to thousands of people.

She even filmed how nervous she was before the event. You can tell that as easy as she made it look, the behind the scenes showed the truth: she was scared out of her mind and full of fear.

On the day of her talk, she nearly stayed in bed and didn’t achieve her primary goal of becoming great at public speaking.

The choice is ours.

“We can either stay in bed where it’s comfortable, warm and there are no critics to judge us, or we can face the world and push beyond our limits”

Each of us has this same choice and most of us make the wrong one or we tell ourselves “I’ll start tomorrow.”

Tomorrow never comes. We keep dreaming about our goals but we rarely try to execute on them. Now I’m not saying we always hide from these big scary goals, but what I’ve experienced is we don’t execute on our goals enough.

Doing something like public speaking once a year or twice a year won’t crank up the dial enough on your results.

Michaela has shown that the fastest way to achieve our big goals is to be relentless. She’s done that by going on stage several times in a short-period.

Most of all, it takes courage.

“You stay in your warm bed and never execute because you lack courage”

We’re not born with courage though. We develop it.

Courage is a musclethat must be exercised every week. Doing the reps any less than a weekly commitment will see your vision, and ultimately your goals, become too far into the distance. To stay on the right track, you’ve got to gain leverage on yourself.

What I’ve learned is that courage is really nothing more than doing the small tasks that form part of your goals. In other words, courage is taking action without being attached to the result.

The moment you focus too hard on the result you’re trying to achieve, you get lost in your own thoughts. Gaining leverage on yourself and having courage starts with scheduling tasks in your calendar. Once something is locked in your calendar, you gain leverage on yourself.

None of us want to let others down and by putting things in your calendar, you make time for being courageous. The good news is you can always retreat to your bed if on the day of taking action you can’t proceed.

What I’ve found though is that you won’t. Once it’s locked in, there’s a very good chance you’re going to execute. Having things in your diary helps to activate your auto-pilot mode. The moment you can use autopilot mode when you require courage is when your circumstances start to change.

Rising up to the challenge.

After moments of courage, the progress you see towards your goals will make it all worth it. Seeing Michaela Alexis witness this firsthand, and sharing it on LinkedIn after her speech last week, made that very idea sink in.

The difference between staying in bed – your metaphorical comfort zone – and crushing your goals is rising up to the challenge in front of you. It’s looking the audience in the eye and telling them you got this. You were born to do this!

All of us get to face these challenges and many of us opt out. Rising up is about finding the hidden courage within yourself to take action when logically it doesn’t make sense.

It’s about using the nerves you’re feeling towards your advantage. It’s about taking your adversities and turning them into weapons of mass destruction.

Final Thought.

Seeing Michaela Alexis look physically sick, nervous, fearful and like she was about to die taught me so much. It’s not often that we get to lift the cover on someone like her who has so much influence, to see what actual courage looks like. The behind the scenes look at all the people you admire will show several similarities to Michaela.

Everything looks easy on video and what you don’t see is the courage that success takes. Each of us is burdened with our own flavor of challenges and overcoming them using courage is how we rise up, get what we want, and cross off those goals that give meaning to our lives.

Purpose, vision, entrepreneurship, personal development and anything else you can think of means nothing unless you have the courage to execute.

You can hide in the comfort of your bed or get out there and dance in front of dragons while the tree’s around you burn bright, and your mind is silenced from all the overthinking.

The choice is yours.

Will you choose courage or comfort?

If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net

This Is What You Should Do When Your Motivation Is Gone

We both know how life feels when you’re motivated, you feel unstoppable, like you can do anything and make anything happen. What makes you feel motivated when you start something isn’t always the same thing that will motivate you in the future. The problem is when people, who don’t read blogs like this, end up just accepting a lack of motivation as their reality and using it as their EXCUSE to avoid taking action and going after their destiny.

If following your destiny and fulfilling your purpose was easy, everyone would do it, however it takes a different type of person to pursue their destiny, a person that reads blogs like this…

This blog is for 2 types of people:

1. You are feeling motivated but want to make sure you keep the consistency of your results.

2. You are feeling a lack of motivation and you know that maintaining your drive will take your life to the next level.

The tools I’m going to share with you are what I have used to create an amazing relationship with my wife, build a 7 figure business, and transform my health, from being 60 lbs overweight to having abs for 8 years straight. Implementing these actions and habits into your life with cultivate success in your life without making you feel like you’re using all your will power, all the time. I believe commitment and motivation go hand in hand. Many people are motivated but they aren’t committed to their dreams, this is why they lack results. Take a Navy Seal for example, he can show up to day 1 of training super motivated, but what happens when he’s weeks deep into the most rigorous exercises?

Is it only the motivated ones that continue on or is it the ones who are committed?

You got it, the committed. But then what happens shortly after they graduate and get their trident?

The feeling of motivation comes back with a greater measure because they did it, they experienced that first taste of success as a result of their commitment. Motivation is a great tool. If we had to live being committed to our cause and purpose without motivation we wouldn’t have as much passion. Using these two tools together is how the most successful people experience the compounding effect of motivation. They make a decision when they are motivated and chose to stay committed to what their decision. Commitment is doing what you said you were going to do, long after the feeling has passed.

“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” – Henry Ford

Commitment is an unbreakable promise and choice you make, it is 100% up to you, whether you feel like it tomorrow or not. Commitment is giving the decisions you make today a long standing integrity, it’s relying on that commitment to withstand even when you want to take a break or feel overwhelmed, it’s pushing through.

Sometimes it’s going back into your past and seeing what worked before. You can use previous motivation as an anchor, pulling yourself back into that frame of mind at any time. Being able to control your emotions and mindset is a huge key to being successful.

It’s important to know what triggers your motivation and what it takes get you back into that state of mind. An example is similar to me when I go golfing, if I’m at the driving range practicing sometimes I will get lazy and my hits will get worse and worse. But when I go out on the course, when I know it counts, I feel myself get into the zone where I have a routine that I aim to execute.

I can access that “zone” on the range as well and anchor that feeling for whenever I need it. Remember when you felt motivated or full of energy, what can you do to bring back that feeling? How can you anchor yourself so that when you think of it, all your motivation comes back and pulls you into the zone?

You adapt to your environment

The #1 thing lacking for most people is in their environment. You will always adapt to your environment and you will always be a product of your five closest friends. Think about someone who gets into the gym every day. They workout because their actions and environment gives them the opportunity to be in changes of themselves. Now apply it to yourself, if you are in an environment without any pressure or opportunities, it’s very likely that will affect your motivation.

Look at the five people closest to you. What is their motivation level? What is their success level in health, business and relationships? It’s like a black hole sucking you in, it could be extremely positive or detrimental to your success. You are either dragging dead weight, an equivalent of the toxicity surrounding you or you’re being dragged and catapulted into success, prompted to pursue your destiny by the people who surround you.

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

Look at network marketing companies, they know that if they create local, regional, and national events they can place people in an environment to change and learn, and there are often enough events that the people showing up to all of them will stay consistent and make themselves and the company profitable.

What are some things you do when you’ve lost motivation? Comment below!

Embrace The Passion Of The Moment: Here’s How.

I’m sitting here on a Saturday afternoon thinking about my next career move. There are two companies I’m in love with and I’ve just had a spark of inspiration.

I’m dealing with a recruiter who knows both of them. Instead of waiting until Monday morning to send him a note about my passion for these two companies, I decided f*ck it; I’m going to embrace the passion I have right now.

Rather than write these words and not follow them myself, I decided to write a letter to the recruiter.

I told him “Person X should definitely have coffee with me.”

I laid out the ten reasons why I can transform their business and linked it back to my passion (blogging).

I ended the email with “Can you feel my passion and energy?”

How bad do you want it?

In these moments of passion, you have to ask yourself “How bad do you want it?”

Are you going to sit on your ass and do nothing or are you going to create opportunity?

My career is down the toilet and only I can fix this challenge. Blaming, crying and complaining will not fix the issue. The passion of the current moment that I get from time to time will.

The same is true for you. If you want something, you have to not only execute but deliver passion too. Think clearly about who can help you and then make the connection.

Don’t be selfish either.

Passion is great but if you use it to fulfill your own selfish desires, then you’ll also fail. In my email, to the recruiter, I told him to tell the two prospective companies that I will give them my advice and strategy for free even if they don’t decide to hire me.

I put it all on the line and backed up my claims and promises with evidence.

“Coming from a place of humbleness and being open to giving stuff away for free is how you show people you care”

Combine this hack with passion, and you have a powerful cocktail of whoop ass that can help you reach your goals – mine is changing my career.

People are attracted to your passion and it’s what sells.

Every entrepreneur I have met who has nailed a pitch has used passion. They’ve made the audience feel instead of trying to inform them.

We make decisions based on emotion, not logic (you know this already) and so when you use passion, you speak to the one thing they’re looking for but are never going to tell you: emotion.

When I feel someone’s passion, I get goosebumps down my spine and I almost always say yes when this happens.

Let’s add fear.

When you lay it all on the line, you’ll often get a sharp dose of fear. This fear can be combined with passion to achieve almost any result. For example, when I do public speaking, I’m almost always a bit nervous. Fear helps give me energy and then I use passion to deliver my message.

By using mostly passion to speak in front of an audience, I don’t need to think too much about notes because my passions (like social media) are engrained in my memory.

Fear is like a strong dose of coffee for me and it makes me alert to the audiences needs and the way they feel.

The single biggest hack.

If you’re having a moment of passion like I just did, then you must use it.

“Moments of passion are typically followed by deep states of “flow” and so you can deliver big results during this time without too much effort”

Moments of passion should never be ignored. Stop everything when you get one and use audio, video or words to capture the message. I’ve recently suffered a few issues with memory thanks to my evil friend mercury which has been discovered in my blood at very high levels.

Because my memory sucks, I’ve been forced to write things down and take action right away otherwise I forget whatever it is that I was going to do.

This may seem like a weakness – not for long as I’m cleaning out the mercury right now – but it’s actually one of my superpowers.

A trigger for a moment of passion is when you get pissed off. For example, if you go to the supermarket today and you’re pissed off by all the products that are loaded with sugar, use your passion to do something about it or capture your thoughts.

Many people find me inspiring and I believe that’s because I capture passion, bottle it up, and deliver it to your phone or computer via blog posts. All I am really doing is capturing moments of passion. I’m looking for things in my internal and external world that will help you.

The number one thing I’m trying to do is use my passion to help you take action. I want you to execute above everything else on your big goals.

Final thought.

I have no idea whether this email to the recruiter will work. Maybe he will read it and think “Geez this Tim guy is so lame. Who’d write such a ridiculous email and actually hit send?”

The thing is I don’t care and you shouldn’t either. Some people are going to get your passion and others are going to think you’re nuts. The ones that think you’re nuts were never going to help you anyway so all you have done is self-select the people that CAN help.

I’m over caring what people think and I’m never going to hide my passion. I hid my passion for years and that got me nowhere. Start swinging the axe at the tree and don’t worry if you miss.

Fingers crossed that this email translates otherwise at least I’ve got a cool story to tell, right?

Hell yeah, amigo!

Embrace your passion right now!

If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net

I live in a country where there is endless opportunity, no war, hardly any violence, beautiful beaches and really healthy food.

Sometimes we need to take a long hard look at ourselves and realize what we have instead of being lost in thoughts of what we don’t have.

Let’s use my own situation to analyze what I have. I have:

– Some really good storytelling skills
– Great insight into social media
– Excellent sales skills
– A history of successful entrepreneurship
– An income generating side business
– Some evolving public speaking skills
– Phenomenal health

Now think about your own situation. When you think long and hard, what do you have?

We are actually very lucky.

Yes, you’ve heard it before but I’m going to say it again. The odds of you being born are massively not in your favor. Here’s the fact from my friend Google:

“The probability of you existing at all comes out to 1 in 10 2,685,000”

Just by being born you are already lucky. There’s no need to feel sorry for yourself because you’ve already won.

When you go through a rough time like I am with my career right now, the way you maintain your mindset is realizing how lucky you are.

All of us are already lucky and by remembering that in the tough times, it gives us the energy to stop ourselves from giving it all up and throwing in the towel.

During moments of chaos, you must remember how lucky you already are.

Someone may not see your talent but that doesn’t mean you’re not lucky.

That’s what I am telling myself today. People in my career right now are not seeing my real talent but that doesn’t mean I don’t have any or that I’m not lucky to be alive.

Sometimes the reality is the opposite of what you think. Sometimes the fact someone can’t see your talent has more to do with their weaknesses. Maybe that person who doesn’t believe in you is just very average and hasn’t developed any greatness of their own (yet).

Rejection often has nothing to do with you at all.

That’s why right now I’m not personally having a bar of it. I encourage you to say the following lines to yourself:

“I can be extraordinary regardless of outside opinions.”
“I will not let rejection blind me from my true talents.”
“Everything happens for a reason and this moment will appear lucky later on.”

The concept of luck.

My idea of luck is pretty extreme. I believe that the more good you do and the more you help others, the luckier you get. Becoming lucky has nothing to do with luck at all.

You can generate perceived luck by following this formula.

You can’t even start though unless you begin to see you’re lucky first.

“That’s because scarcity blinds you from the abundance that each of us has access to”

Put things into perspective.

Things could be tough right now but they could be even worse. That very idea should cheer you up right now.

There are highs and lows in our career and unless you can embrace both sides of this reality, you’ll get lost in a negative reality that forces you to think you’re not already lucky.

I’m guilty of that too – especially today.

What we must remember is so cliché: we have air in our lungs and are alive. This means we are already luckier than most things that exist in the universe.

Focus on how you can get to where you want to go rather than being lost in what you’re lacking. By doing this, you’ll realize how lucky you have it.

The job loss, divorce, sickness, startup failure – whatever – will serve you so much more when you realize how lucky you are with or without those challenges.

If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net